Should I Buy a Metal Detector and Move to England?

Share this:

I was looking over the Joan Allen Metal Detectors website and I got to thinking about what sorts of interesting things people have found using metal detectors, so I started doing some searches on trusty ol’ Google News! Here’s are a few interesting stories I found.

Paul McEvoy found a 14th century gold ring studded with a ruby and an emerald using his metal detector in a field in South Yorkshire, England. He found the ring six inches beneath the surface. The ring hasn’t yet been valued, but it has been declared officially as a “treasure trove” under the Treasure Act and is now being held in the Retford Museum. McEvoy says he has found ancient coins before but nothing as interesting as the ring.

Terry Herbert came across one of the biggest Anglo-Saxon gold hoards ever, using his metal detector which he purchased at a yard sale for only a couple bucks more than 10 years ago. His find contained about 1,500 pieces, mostly elaborately decorated war gear, which included 11 lbs. of gold and 5.5 lbs. of silver and was valued at £3.285 million. Daaaaaayumm!

A team of metal detector enthusiasts paid £12 each to join a charity dig on a farmers land in Twinstead, a village in Essex county in England. They discovered an estimated 200 valuable coins, each coin valued at approximately £350. All findings were supposed to be handed over to the event organizer to be given to the British Museum for evaluation, but only two of the coins were turned in, while the rest were pocketed by the participants who swarmed the area. There are plans to prosecute anyone who hasn’t returned the coins after 14 days. Uh oh.

There are lots of other crazy things people have found using metal detectors as well, such as the discovery of Iron Age coins, and someone finding an Iron Age neckband, and one person found a 16th century sword. There are plenty more stories, but I didn’t want this article to run on too much longer. There’s one thing I’ve learned while doing this research. If I want to find a treasure, I need to move to a farm in England.